“Do you know atoms are comprised almost completely of empty space, Aslaug? Objects around us look solid, but they’re not. The hairstreak is more not there than there. And yet we see it. It seems solid. The sneezeweed? You don’t see the plant right now, but you know what it looks like—you have an image of it in your mind. That image has almost as much substance as the real thing.”
“You want the sneezeweed for evil spirits?” I say, trying to draw Mother back. I want Mother to say yes; I want her to believe in spirits. Even evil spirits.
Mother continues as if I’ve said nothing. “Celtic people in the Middle Ages understood this about butterflies—they knew butterflies are ethereal, not really solid. They saw butterflies as souls. They believed women became pregnant by swallowing these butterfly souls.” Mother removes a hand from her pocket and reaches toward the hairstreak; it flutters high for a moment, then descends again to the clover. “They believed each butterfly soul flew about in search of a new mother.” She bends to the clover, grips a cluster and rips it from the ground. She turns and pushes the clover toward me, and I reach to take it. But she pulls it back. “Is that how you came to me, Aslaug Datter?” she says. “Did you come as a butterfly soul?”
I can feel her moist breath on my face—a fog of peppermint leaves and tobacco. “I don’t know,” I want to say. “You’ve never told me of my birth. You’ve never mentioned my father, not even his name. I don’t know where I came from.” But I don’t say this. I’ve learned not to take Mother’s bait.
“The words for soul and butterfly are the same in Greek,” I say. “Psyche. It means both.”
“So you’ve learned something I’ve taught you,” Mother says. And I realize the butterfly is gone.
When we’re not out foraging or doing chores, Mother teaches me Newton and Lyell and Darwin and Einstein and Dalton and Bohr and Heisenberg and Pauli. Newton’s Principia, Lyell’s Principles of Geology, Darwin’s On the Origin of Species and Einstein’s “Cosmological Considerations on the General Theory of Relativity.”
And languages. I have no memory of learning Danish or English or Latin—as if they’ve always been mine. But I do recall Mother teaching me Greek before I could reach the kitchen sink. By the time I could hang clothes on the line, I was learning Hebrew and Arabic and Aramaic. And on the day of my first menses, Mother began with Sanskrit. Then other ancient languages: Coptic, and the runic alphabet, and a bit of the Celtic languages, Gaulish, Celtiberian and Lepontic.
Mother teaches me other subjects as well, but only because the state of Maine demands it. A man from the Department of Education came to our door two years ago—after our neighbor reported us, Mother claims—and now I learn language arts, social studies, health education, library skills, fine arts. But of these subjects, Mother teaches me only what I need to pass the standardized test she’s required to give me each year, and she blacks out passages from most every book I have to read. Although I’d never tell Mother, I’m grateful she has to teach me these subjects; otherwise, I’d have practically no understanding of the world outside our house, outside these woods, outside the microscopic, the scientific. I wouldn’t know of poetry and fiction; I wouldn’t know of art; I wouldn’t understand democracy or taxes, or that human beings have sex for reasons other than procreation. And I wouldn’t have this awareness of how much I’m missing—of how many passages Mother’s blacked out.
Mother looks into the basket containing the jimsonweed and studies its contents. I notice Mother’s expression, and I see what I’d wished to see before: relief, for certain; almost pleasure. She reaches behind her head and coils her pale fan of hair. “Madapple,” she says, but not to me. And then, “You did well, Aslaug,” as her eyes sift through the collected mound of jimsonweed. “You did very well.”
She begins walking toward the woods in the direction of our home, carrying the basket of jimsonweed and tobacco, but she’s struggling with the basket, still struggling with the pain. She seems to have forgotten the hairstreak butterfly.
“What about the sneezeweed?”
“You are ridiculous, Aslaug Datter,” she says. “I was being facetious.”
She says this, and yet I sense otherwise. She wanted the sneezeweed, I think; she wants the sneezeweed. I’m not sure whether to feel grateful or terrified. Mother scoffs at the mystical, the magical, the mythological, even if at times she slips into it, as with the hairstreak. And yet, the more Mother teaches me science, the more cracks I see, and the more cracks it seems Mother must see. Science describes the world; it doesn’t explain it: it can describe the universe’s formation, but it can’t explain why such an event would have occurred, how something can come from nothing. That’s the miracle. Mother ridicules me when I talk this way, but now she wants the sneezeweed.
I fumble behind Mother now, looping one basket around my forearm, gripping the other two. Juggling the baskets, I couldn’t walk much faster than Mother if I tried, but I don’t try; I wouldn’t try. Our shadows, stretched before us, mingle like butterflies courting. A dance of searching souls, I think. That sense of insecurity—that something is amiss—still drags at me, so unlike gravity, so much stronger. I hear Mother in my head: “The force that keeps our universe from soaring off into the oblivion is astonishingly weak.” The feeling I have now is anything but.
We approach the ferns Mother made reference to earlier. They look so simple, unadorned by flowers or fruit or extraneous color. Yet, they are more complex genetically than we humans, who seem to feel such need for adornment. I think of people I’ve seen in Bethan—of their painted toe-nails, fingernails, cheeks, lips and eyes.
This memory stirs my longing for bloodroot, for the blood of the root, that orange-red sap I’ve used in secret to dye my belly with the likeness of a spotted touch-me-not, as if somehow that golden flower with its splotches of burnt red could protect me from my mother: from her biting words, the stinging rod; her absence. Touch me not. And yet, I want her touch, and I want to hear her words—words that open small passages into the tunnels of her mind, and often seduce me with wonder.
I find myself looking beyond the ferns, into the moist woods. And I spot a withered bloodroot. Its leaves are collapsed and dried, but I know its rounded rootstock is still fleshy, and full, and waiting for me to release it from the ground, give it new life on me. Give me new life in its adornment.
I digress a bit from Mother as I move toward the bloodroot. There is a gully just before the woods, the water traveling almost indiscernibly, the ferns reflecting there like the trees of a submerged and miniature world. The impulse stops me: I put the baskets down and lean over the water, toward the ferns, and my face enters their world, but my reflection is obscured by my hair. I hear Mother behind me, first her voice calling my name, then her movement. I turn to see she is running toward me. Running. I didn’t think she was capable of this. She grabs my hair before I think to get away; a hot splash of pain radiates across my scalp. She pulls me back from the gully, and I fall into the baskets; salsify and goatsbeard speckle the ground. Mother stands over me. “What were you doing?” Her hair has come loose, and it flails about her like wings. She is breathing erratically. I feel afraid of her, for her.
“I’m sorry, Mother,” I say. “I’m so sorry.” I don’t ask her why she is angry, why I am sorry.
“What were you doing?” she says again.
“The cinnamon ferns,” I say. “I was looking at them.”
“The ferns?”
“You mentioned them earlier. Their chromosomes. You said they had more chromosomes…”
Mother doesn’t move. She hangs over me like a willow, her hair, her arms, her clothing, suspended and caging. “You were looking at the ferns,” she says; it is not a question. But her eyes challenge me.
Mother reaches into her pocket then and removes something. She tosses it onto my chest before moving away. I sit up, and the hairstreak tumbles into my lap.
“Is that what you were looking for, Aslaug Datter?” Mother says. She
picks up the basket of jimsonweed and walks again.
I lift the lifeless body into my palm.
“It didn’t belong here,” she calls back.
I stand, still holding the butterfly; I can’t bear to let it drop. I recall the story Mother told about the Celts. A butterfly soul. I lift the hairstreak, slip it inside my mouth and swallow.
SOLOMON’S SEAL
2007
—Please state your name for the record.
—Lens Grumset.
—What is your home address, Mr. Grumset?
—886 Bedrag Road, Hartswell, Maine.
—How long have you lived at this address?
—Thirty-one years.
—Do you know the defendant, the woman we are referring to as Aslaug Hellig?
—I do. She and her ma lived next to me for about thirteen years, until about four years ago.
—During the time Aslaug and her mother were living next to you, did you see them periodically?
—Well, I wouldn’t say I seen them much. They kept to themselves, mostly. Kept their windows covered, for insulation I guessed at the time—but now that this is all come to light, well, who knows what the hell was going on.
—Objection, Your Honor. Move to strike. Speculation.
—I’ll strike his last sentence only. Please just answer the question asked, Mr. Grumset.
—Yes, sir, Your Honor.
—Mr. Grumset, you said you didn’t see Aslaug and her mother much. Did you ever see them?
—Sure I did. Mostly Aslaug. When she was a kid, I saw her now and then. She was quite a tomboy, that one. Racing round the yard like some wild animal, stomping through leaves and puddles, climbing trees. I always felt bad there weren’t other youngsters round for her to play with. She was always alone. Makes kids strange spending so much time alone.
—Objection, Your Honor. Move to strike. The witness’s conclusion is speculative and lacking foundation. Mr. Grumset is not an expert in child psychology.
—Sustained only as to Mr. Grumset’s last sentence; otherwise, the objection is overruled.
—Did you see Aslaug during the months just prior to her mother’s death, Mr. Grumset?
—No, not much. Aslaug didn’t spend much time out of doors when she was a teenager. Lord knows what she was doing cooped up in that house of theirs. Although I would see her on their back porch hanging clothes and fiddling around. And she and her ma worked in the yard sometimes. And they also used to take these walks out in the woods. They’d come back with all manner of paraphernalia. Sometimes I wondered whether they was into witchcraft or the like.
—Objection. Move to strike Mr. Grumset’s final sentence. Speculation.
—Sustained. Get to the point, Counsel.
—Mr. Grumset, did you observe Aslaug on the day of her mother’s death?
—You bet I did.
—And what did you see?
—Well, I remember it happened on that day about four years ago when Aslaug pulled down all their curtains.
—Objection. Move to strike. Speculation. Lack of foundation. No one has testified Aslaug took down any curtains.
—Well, her ma sure as hell couldn’t had done that—take down those big curtains, I mean. The woman was nearly crippled by then.
—Mr. Grumset, please. You are not permitted to speak when you haven’t been asked a question. Your objection is sustained, Counsel. Strike Mr. Grumset’s statements from the record.
—Sorry, Your Honor. Sorry.
—Mr. Grumset, please explain what you saw at the Helligs’ house on the day of Maren Hellig’s death.
—Well, like I was saying, about four years ago—the day those big curtains came down—I saw Aslaug dragging her ma’s body to the backyard. She was going to bury it.
—Move to strike, Your Honor. Speculation.
—I’ll strike that last statement. Please just describe what you saw, Mr. Grumset.
—Well, you see, I saw Aslaug dragging some large white thing out the back door of their house, into the yard. I couldn’t see what the thing was at the time, but later, when the police got there, I saw it was her ma’s body. Anyway, Aslaug was having trouble pulling it, and I wondered why on earth her ma wasn’t helping her. Then I remembered her ma was pretty much crippled. If I could’ve helped her, I probably would’ve gone over there, but I was in this damn wheelchair. When she finished pulling it out, she went and got a shovel and started digging. It was a couple hours before I appreciated the fact that the hole looked like a goddamned grave.
—What else, if anything, did you see the defendant doing while she was in the backyard?
—Well, I remember her rolling this big rock around. And I remember her doing something to that rock. Writing on it or something. I couldn’t tell.
—What else, if anything, did you see the defendant doing?
—Nothing. She wasn’t doing nothing else but digging, until the police got there.
—Let’s back up a bit. Did you do anything when you realized the hole the defendant was digging looked like a grave?
—Well, I called the police. Not right away. I mean, the body was wrapped up in something white. A sheet, I think. I couldn’t be sure what it was. But after another fifteen minutes or so, when I didn’t see Aslaug’s ma around, well, hell, I felt I had to call, especially ’cause I’d heard someone scream over there at their house earlier that day. In the morning.
—Objection. Move to strike. Nonresponsive.
—Overruled.
—You heard a scream coming from the Helligs’ household that same morning?
—Yeah. At seven or eight that morning, I think. I’d not thought much of it when I first heard it. It could of been anything, I thought. But when I realized that goddamned hole looked like a grave, well, Christ. I thought back on that scream, and I made the call to the cops. And it’s a damn good thing I did. If I hadn’t been watching the whole affair, Maren Hellig would probably be buried back there now. And I might be buried back there, too, if you know what I mean.
—Objection, Your Honor. Move to strike. Speculative. Narrative. Misleading. Counsel needs to get some control over his witness.
—Objection sustained. And I agree you need to rein your witness in, Counsel. Strike Mr. Grumset’s last comments from the record, everything following his statement that he called the police.
—I apologize, Your Honor. I’ll wrap things up here. Mr. Grumset, did the police arrive at the Helligs’ house?
—They sure did. They came right away, and there was a whole bunch of them. They surrounded Aslaug, tried to take the shovel from her. But she started swinging at them with it. And she was kicking and cussing. I was shocked. I was damn well shocked. They had to handcuff her, you know, just to get her under control.
—Thank you, Mr. Grumset. I have no further questions, Your Honor.
BITTERSWEET
2003
We pass through the clearing, only minutes from our home now. The bloodroot bulges in my pocket; its blood pulses against my leg as I walk. I dug up its roots after Mother turned away, after I swallowed the hairstreak and it found its mother in me. I’ll paint a butterfly on myself this time: the hairstreak will be reborn on me.
Clouds like gauze stretch low across the sky; it seems the whole world is enclosed by a rippled tarp. I can see the house: its exterior walls angle first to the left, then the right, as if behind warped glass. From the distance it seems impossible the house could be as imposing to me as it is. Lanky, its gables like antiquated hats, it stands like blue vervain gone dry: its broken shingles and peeling paint fold and crease; it seems the entire house could be uprooted and snapped.
Mother perches on a fallen log near a vine of nightshade; her basket of sapientia rests on the ground. A stalk of cankerroot juts from her lips; she chews it for the sores that speckle the interior of her mouth in mounds. She turns toward me, pulls the cankerroot from her mouth, tucks the soggy stalk in the hip pocket of her dress.
“Help me, gir
l,” she says. She’s removed her gloves and dropped them to the ground; green pulp hangs from her hands. I realize she’s picking the nightshade berries. Trying to, her fingers no longer capable of subtlety.
“They’re not ripe,” I say. I lower the baskets, flatten the bloodroot deeper into my pocket. “We can’t eat them.”
“I know that, Aslaug,” she says. Still, she tries to pick; her hands grab the berries in fistfuls and squash most.
I pick with her. The berries are cool and waxlike, firmer than I remember. Shiny and green. I imagine the taste of their juice, first bitter, then sweet. Solanum dulcamara. Bittersweet. Edible when ripe and red, poisonous when green. But not so poisonous, I think. I ate the unripe berries as a child, just three or four when Mother wasn’t looking. If Mother weren’t with me, I’d eat a handful; it’s been a long time since breakfast.
“These are not the berries of Atropa belladonna,” Mother says. “They won’t kill you.”
“Atropa belladonna,” I say. “Deadly nightshade. It doesn’t grow here.”
“No,” she says. But without conviction, it seems. “The name is Latin for ‘beautiful woman’—have I told you? Women used to put drops of deadly nightshade in their eyes to dilate their pupils. They thought the enlarged pupils made them more beautiful.”
“You told me before people first used belladonna because it’s a hallucinogenic—it makes them feel like birds, like they’re flying?” I say, but I think of dilated eyes. When Mother inhales the madapple, her pupils stay dilated for days. But now her pupils are pinpricks. Yet her eyes still look wild.
“You would remember that,” Mother says. “Are you plotting to fly away?”
How is it that Mother knows my mind? When she’d first described deadly nightshade to me, I had wished the plant grew in Maine; I remember longing for that sense of flight.
“This is bittersweet nightshade,” I say, and I turn my face to the bittersweet. “Not deadly nightshade. Why are we picking it? Why do you want it?”
Mother ignores me, keeps picking.
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